


The Queen's Award

by ambyr



Category: The Summer Prince - Alaya Dawn Johnson
Genre: Art, F/F, First Time, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:51:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Queen, June has little time to pursue personal interests. Bebel is determined to change this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Queen's Award

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryfkah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/gifts).



From the heights of Tier Ten, the waters of the bay look like a flat sheet of glass. The Queen's desk is just as smooth and gleaming and stretches almost as far. It makes Ieyascu's look like a flimsy end table. Somehow, I thought that would make it easier—having that much distance between us. It doesn't. I fiddle with the pen in my hand, for all the world like I'm the naughty, nervous student, while Bebel sits patiently on the other side of the desk with her hands clasped in her lap. Bebel the Perfect, true to form. I try to call up some of my old jealousy and irritation, but I can't. We've come too far together. That's the problem.

I set the pen down. "Bebel. Your grades are the best in Palmares Três. And your singing—it helped launch a revolution. I wouldn't be here without it."

"Thank you," she says quietly, eyes downcast.

There's no other way but to say it. "By all rights, you should have the Queen's Award. But I can't give it to you."

The faintest of lines creases her brow. "I know that, June. Everyone would call favoritism. You can't afford that, not when you're trying to clean up the city."

"Oh." I sit back in my chair, nonplussed. "Well, then."

"Is that what this was all about? The summons, the—this?" She gestures at the office, and I work hard to keep from blushing. I think I even succeed.

"I thought you'd be more upset. It's everything you've worked toward, all these years. You've _earned_ it."

Bebel shrugged. "It was never going to be mine, June. Yours, maybe. Never mine."

"Then why did you try so _hard_?"

"Because it's what I do, June. Because I love doing it. Because I wanted people to hear me. Because," she smiles, a flash of teeth gone before I can blink, "I thought I might change something. Though I never thought on the same scale as you. A mind here, a heart there—that's all I hoped for. Not overthrowing the entire government."

"That was mostly an accident," I mutter into the desk.

"I know," Bebel agrees. "You were in it for the art, first and foremost. Just like me." She studies me for a moment. "June, when was the last time you made art?"

Now it's my turn to furrow my brow. The doodles I make in the corners of my notes at the endless briefings don't count, even if some of the caricatures make Gil cackle with delight.

Bebel takes my silence for the answer it is. "I knew it!" She stands abruptly. The intensity of her gaze makes the desk suddenly seem like no barrier at all. "June, come with me. Let Palmares Três wait for a bit. It doesn't do any good for you to become Queen if the office makes you exactly like the Queens who came before."

I've always recognized the power of Bebel's voice, even when I hated her for having it, but I've never had all that command turned on just _me_. Before I know it, I've rounded the desk. 

I don't even think to ask where we're going.

* * *

If I had, I would have told her she was crazy.

"How did you even know that access panel was _there_?" I shout over the winds. We're at the very top of the pyramid that is Palmares Três, up where the exposed struts sway in every gust. The water below us may be calm, but this high above the sheltering arms of the bay the air is anything but. I've been more dangerous places with Enki, but always with my nanohook boots, my nanohook gloves. Here, nothing is keeping me from falling but my grip on the pyramid's frame and Bebel's grip on my other arm. And the water is _very_ far below.

"Pasqual," she shouts back. "He got blueprints for the city. He wanted to understand the math behind the structure. What kept it standing." I can only really hear one word in three, but the rest are easy enough to fill in. Typical Pasqual. All the beauty of Palmares Três, and he thinks only of math.

"Why are we here?" I ask finally. My curiosity begins to overcome my fear, and I shuffle out further from the hatch, still clinging to the frame. Bebel follows, never letting go of my arm.

"Just listen." She closes her eyes and tilts her face back to the sky, and I follow her example.

For a moment, the lack of vision is disorienting, but I soon find my balance again. The wind is loud—really loud . . . but it's not all one sound. As the minutes pass, I can make out the creak of the metal struts from the higher-pitched squeak of the flexing panels, the hiss of a gust twisting down the narrow passage toward the access panel from the roar over our heads. It's music of a sort, rough and wild but music all the same. The true anthem of our city, though almost no one has heard it, being sung here in the isolated reaches of Tier Ten.

There's a quieter sound, too, but the more I listen, the more it stands out. It's Bebel, I realize, harmonizing with the wind. 

A stronger gust flexes the platform under our feet, and Bebel stumbles. Her fingers close vise-like on my arm, and her singing stops.

"Do you see?" she shouts, finally, once she's sure of her balance again. "Here, come inside so we can talk."

* * *

Back in the corridor, with the access hatch slammed shut behind us, my ears ring in the sudden silence. Our breathing sounds startlingly loud.

"It's beautiful," I say finally.

"I know," Bebel agrees. "And I want to bring it to the people. To the verde, even, if I can manage it. Set out microphones, capture the sound, and pipe it down live into the city, then layer my singing over it in a loop." 

Her hand slides down my arm to squeeze my fingers, and for a moment I squeeze back, sharing her excitement. It's a beautiful idea for art, an inversion of a city structure that desperately needs inversion. It's the sort of idea that I would have killed to have had, once. Back when I still had time for art, and not just endless meetings and doodles. My fingers go limp again.

"That's great, Bebel," I say, trying to put some of the enthusiasm I'd felt a moment before into my voice. "Do you need me to get you permits for the microphones?"

"No—well, yes, that would help," she says, checking herself. That's Bebel: always practical, always wanting to work within the letter of the law if she can. "But what I want you to do is paint."

"Paint what?" I ask, but already I can see it. It's not just the sound that gives the pyramid's tip its beauty, for all that Bebel had made me listen with my eyes closed. It's the view, too. The sense of disorientation, of danger. The fall that lies one step away. How to capture that? Layered glass, maybe? I can see panels in my mind's eye, painted not with a realist landscape but with abstracted lines, just enough to hint at the sky and sea and struts above.

"There," Bebel says, voice dripping satisfaction. I can't begrudge her the smugness, too caught in my imaginings. "You found it again. The art."

And she kisses me.

I respond reflexively, lips parting to let her tongue in, fingers tightening on hers. Then the distraction lifts, and I pull back.

"Bebel, what?"

She looks amused. "I asked you to have a threesome once, June. I don't know how much clearer I could be about wanting you."

I hadn't known. I hadn't noticed. Enki had drowned everything out. But Enki is gone, now, and Bebel's hand is warm in mine, and my blood is still pounding from the danger of being on the pyramid's peak. I want _her_ , I realize. I want her very badly indeed.

"You could have asked for just _me_ ," I say, and pull her body against mine. Her lips find mine again, and our tongues tangle together even as she lifts one leg to hook it around mine, rubbing against my thigh. We slide to the floor still kissing. Her full breasts are soft against my slightly flatter chest. I draw the arm I have wrapped around her shoulder forward and let my fingertips trail over the top of her bust. She makes an enthusiastic humming noise into my mouth and busies herself with the buttons on my shirt.

It's a terribly undignified position for a Queen to find herself in, sprawled half-undressed in a maintenance hall, and I don't care for a second.

"I do," I manage to gasp as she finishes with my shirt and draws her mouth away from mine to suck hungrily at one newly exposed nipple, "have a very nice bed." It came with the office. It could sleep six of me.

"Did you want to stop and move?" Bebel inquires, letting my nipple free for only a second before she begins toying with it with her fingers. I moan a little more and arch forward, pressing my crotch against her leg. She sounds very serious. Of course she does. It's Bebel. I'm the rebel. I'm the one who goes where she shouldn't be and does what she shouldn't do.

Now that I'm Queen, it's harder and harder to find those places. I should take advantage of the opportunity while I have it.

"No," I say decisively, and twist my fingers through Bebel's honey-gold hair as she presses her face to my breast again.

* * *

It feels like hours later when we separate, only our hands still touching, to lie on our backs in the corridor and catch our breaths. Bebel's hair is a frizzy halo around her head, and I'm pretty sure the button for my pants vanished down a vent, never to be seen again.

It can't have been that long, or someone would have come looking for me. Someone _will_ come looking for me soon. I need to go back to my office. But I want to savor this moment, to take another selfish minute to myself. I close my eyes, match my breathing to Bebel's, and let my mind sketch without conscious thought. I'm still plotting out the panels, but the curves of Bebel's body intrude unbidden into the image, melding with the lines of the bay. I wonder if I can get away with painting it that way, if Bebel would notice.

Bebel is the first one to stir, sitting up and drawing her knees to her chest as she begins rebuttoning her shirt.

"You need to go back to your office," she says, echoing the responsible voice in my head. The Bebel voice. I hadn't realized, before, how much that part of me sounded like her, in inflection and tone.

"I know." I sigh and begin finger-combing my hair back into place.

"I'll come back tomorrow," she promises. "We need to talk about microphones."

"Of course," I say, lips twitching. "Microphones." Bebel shoots me a look. She meant it. We _will_ talk about microphones. I'll just have to do my best to convince her that can be the _second_ thing we do.

She's finished dressing, and she stands up and smooths her clothes down against her rounded hips. I let my stare linger, appreciative, and am rewarded with a smile.

"I don't want the Queen's Award, June," she says as she turns to walk down the corridor. "I never did. I want the Queen."

That's Bebel for you. She always wants the last word.

This time, I let her have it.


End file.
